Thinking of upgrading to Windows 8 from Vista,
looking for advice.

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Basically looking for opinions on Windows 8. Would be upgrading from Vista, and ideally using it as a gaming machine especially for Steam. Will hopefully be upgrading parts over the next year or so, but I want the OS upgraded soonish, so how is Windows 8?

Advantages and Disadvantages? The main one I want to know is, how will my games run on 8 compared to Vista? One of the major questions is this. I have two hard drives, C and D. Windows Vista is on C, whilst Steam is on D. Would the stuff on D be replaced during the upgrade process, or is it only stuff on the C Drive that will be replaced? I know I would need to reinstall Steam, so would back up the saves and whatnot, but I have stuff like music on D, would that need to be securely backed up or would D be effectively untouched?

Would the stuff on D be replaced during the upgrade process, or is it only stuff on the C Drive that will be replaced?

No, your D drive won't be affected at all if you install it on C.

GilgameshSwords posted...

I know I would need to reinstall Steam, so would back up the saves and whatnot, but I have stuff like music on D, would that need to be securely backed up or would D be effectively untouched?

Nah, you don't have to reinstall Steam manually. Just open up Steam on your D drive and it will repair itself and everything will work properly. You might have to backup your save games if the game doesn't support Steam Cloud and they are stored on the C drive.

Would the stuff on D be replaced during the upgrade process, or is it only stuff on the C Drive that will be replaced?

No, your D drive won't be affected at all if you install it on C.

GilgameshSwords posted...

I know I would need to reinstall Steam, so would back up the saves and whatnot, but I have stuff like music on D, would that need to be securely backed up or would D be effectively untouched?

Nah, you don't have to reinstall Steam manually. Just open up Steam on your D drive and it will repair itself and everything will work properly. You might have to backup your save games if the game doesn't support Steam Cloud and they are stored on the C drive.

Okay thank you. So I would not even need to uninstall Steam, when I open it up (in theory) it should download the stuff for 8? I would back up everything on the C Drive to be very safe.

As an aside following that logic, whilst I would back up to be safe, I should conceptually not need to uninstall or remove anything from D as they would be safe?

They'll run about as well as with Vista, possibly 3% faster or something. In practice the difference would be insignificant with modern hardware. Get W7 though, especially if it's cheaper - trust me you'll be glad in the end when you're not dealing with a OS made for touchscreens and children.

The D: partition will not be affected by your upgrade, so just back up anything on C: and go for it.

They'll run about as well as with Vista, possibly 3% faster or something. In practice the difference would be insignificant with modern hardware. Get W7 though, especially if it's cheaper - trust me you'll be glad in the end when you're not dealing with a OS made for touchscreens and children.

The D: partition will not be affected by your upgrade, so just back up anything on C: and go for it.

In terms of price in the UK, based on Amazon (seller being Microsoft), it is much cheaper to go for the 8 upgrade than for 7, by quite a significant amount. Thank you.

As an aside following that logic, whilst I would back up to be safe, I should conceptually not need to uninstall or remove anything from D as they would be safe?

Indeed. Everyone on D will stay as is. If you had installed something on D though, then you'll lose the register entries that it made on C. Some applications might have issues with that, so you might have to reinstall some of your stuff then.To remove those applications, simply delete them.

I've jumped back and forth from Windows 7 to 8 multiple times and I've never had to reinstall Steam manually. If you had it installed, just run it and it will repair itself. All your games (hopefully you've installed it on D) will be ready to play.

Yeah, installed Steam on D - essentially used D as my games and media drive, keeping C as clean as I can (though interestingly C only has 90 of 230gb free, but before the reinstall I will uninstall some stuff). Thank you all for your help. The next step is when I get home from work, I will run the upgrade assistant to ensure that I can definitely run it (http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/windows-8/upgrade-to-windows-8).